Field
The present application relates generally to gloves and more particularly to gloves having highly chemical resistant properties.
Description of the Related Art
Many workers wear gloves that provide protection from hazardous chemicals. For example, workers, and especially workers in industrial or laboratory settings, encounter many types of chemicals, e.g., acids, bases, hydroxides, aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, and/or aqueous or non-aqueous polar or non-polar solvents and/or solutions combining any or all of these chemicals, which may further contain hydrocarbons or have inorganic chemicals dissolved therein. However, no single polymeric barrier can protect against such an array of disparate chemicals and, furthermore, gloves optimized for chemical resistance are thick, inflexible, and often specified for one class of chemicals, e.g., non-polar hydrocarbons and, therefore, expense is added by having to re-glove often or double-glove when varied in-service applications are encountered. Moreover, workers also want thin, flexible, comfortable gloves for extended use so hands do not tire easily and/or to perform delicate tasks requiring dexterity. The flexibility of a glove is highly correlated with the thickness of the glove and increases according to the inverse of the cube of the thickness. Therefore, a reduction of the thickness of a polymeric glove by 30 percent increases the flexibility by a factor of three but commensurately decreases chemical resistance.
With the foregoing in view, the inventors herein provide composite polymeric gloves that are thin, soft, flexible, and highly chemically resistant to many classes of chemicals and methods for manufacturing the composite gloves.